riches and elegance foster talents; but that which is yet more indispensable to them is the good taste and the freedom of public opinion.
The Russians have not yet reached the point of civilisation at which there is real enjoyment of the arts. At present their enthusiasm on these subjects is pure vanity; it is a pretence, like their passion for classic architecture. Let these people look within themselves, let them listen to their primitive genius, and, if they have received from Heaven a perception of the beauties of art, they will give up copying, in order to produce what God and nature expect from them. So far, all their magnificent works together will never be equivalent, in the eyes of those few real amateurs of the beautiful who vegetate at Petersburg, to a sojourn in Paris, or a journey in Italy.
The Opera-house is built on the plan of those of ]Blan and Naples ; but these latter are more stately, and more harmonious in their proportions, than any thing of the kind which I have yet seen in Russia.
288 POPULATION OF PETERSBURG.
THE POPULATION OF PETERSBURG.SOLITUDE OF THE STREETS,—
THE ARCHITECTURE. PLACE DU CAROUSEL IN PARIS. SQUARE
OF THE GRAND DDKE AT FLORENCE. THE PERSPECTIVE
NEWSKI. PAVEMENTS. EFFECTS OF THE THAW.INTERIOR
OF THE HOUSES THE BEDS. VISIT TO PRINCE . —
BOWERS IN THE DRAWING-ROOMS. BEAUTY OF THE SLAVONIAN-
MEN. RUSSIAN COACHMEN AND POSTILLIONS. THE FELD-
JAGER. THE POETICAL ASPECT OF THE LAND. — CONTRAST BE
TWEEN MEN AND THINGS. ARCHITECTURE OF THE CHURCHES.
— A GENERAL VIEW OF PETERSBURG. — PICTURESQUE AND BEAUTIFUL NOTWITHSTANDING ITS ARCHITECTURE. — NATURE BEAUTIFUL EVEN NEAR THE POLE. — ANTIPATHY BETWEEN THE TEUTONIC AND RUSSIAN RACES. — ITS EFFECTS IN POLAND.—
RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN THE RUSSIANS AND SPANIARDSHEAT
OF THE SUMMER. FUEL IN PETERSBURG. —ADDRESS OF THE
RUSSIAN PEOPLE. THE DESIGNS OF PROVIDENCE. — FUTURE
SCARCITY OF FUEL IN RUSSIA.WANT OF INVENTIVE MECHANICAL
GENIUS AMONG THE PEOPLE.THE ROMANS OF THE NORTH.
RELATION BETWEEN PEOPLE AND THEIR GOVERNMENTS. — THE PLASTERERS. — UGLINESS AND DIRTINESS OF THE WOMEN OF THE LOWER CLASSES. — THEIR DISPROPORTION IN POINT OF NUMBER, AND ITS RESULT. —ASIATIC MANNERS. — RUSSIAN POLITENESS.
The population of Petersburg amounts to four hundred and fifty thousand souls, besides the garrison. So say patriotic Russians: but those who are well informed, and who consequently pass here for evil-disposed persons, assure me that it does not reach to four hundred thousand, in which number the garrison is included. Small houses of wood occupy the quarters beyond those immense spaces, called squares, that form the centre of the city.
SOLITUDE OF THE STREETS.289
The Russians, descended from a junction of various warlike and wandering tribes, have not yet quite forgotten the life of the bivouac. Petersburg is the head-quarters of an army, and not the capital of a nation. However magnificent this military city may be, it appears bare and naked in the eyes of one from the West of Europe.
' The distances are the curse of Russia,' said the emperor; and it is a remark the justice of which may be verified even in the streets of Petersburg. Thus, it is not for the sake of display that people's carriages are drawn by four horses: here every visit is an excursion. The Russian horses, though full of mettle and sinew, have not so much bone as ours : the badness of the pavement soon tires them; two horses could not easily draw for any considerable time an ordinary carriage in the streets of Petersburg. To drive four is therefore an object of the first necessity to those who wish to live in the fashionable world. Among the Russians, however, all have not the right to attach four horses to their carriage. This permission is only accorded to persons of a certain rank.
After leaving the centre of the city the stranger loses himself in vaguely-defined lines of road, bordered by barracks which seem as though destined for the temporary accommodation of labourers employed in some great work; they are the magazines of forage, clothes, and of other supplies for the military. The grass grows in these
So many peristyles have been added to houses, so many porticoes adorn the barracks that here re-
vol. i.о
290 ARCHITECTURE IN ST. PETERSBURG.
present palaces, so great a passion for borrowed decorations has presided over the construction of this temporary capital, that I count fewer men than columns in the squares of Petersburg, always silent and melancholy, by reason of their size alone, and their unchangeable regularity. The line and rule figure well the manner in which absolute sovereigns view things, and straight angles may be said to be the blocks over which despotic architecture stumbles. Living architecture, if the expression may be permitted, will not rise at command. It springs, so to speak, from itself, and is an involuntary creation of the genius and wants of a people. To make a great nation is infallibly to create an architecture. I should not be astonished if some one succeeded in proving that there are as many original styles of architecture as mother tongues. The mania for rules of symmetry is not, however, peculiar to the Russians: with us, it is a legacy of the Empire. Had it not been for this bad taste of the Parisian architects, we should, long since, have been presented with some sensible plan for ornamenting and finishing our monstrous Place du Carrousel, but the necessity for parallels stops every thing.
TThen architects of genius successively contributed their efforts to making the square of the Grand Duke at Florence one of the most beautiful objects in the world, they were not tyrannised over by a passion for straight lines and arbitrary proportions: they conceived the idea of the beautiful in all its liberty, without reference to mathematical diagrams. It has been a want of the instinctive perceptions of art, and the free creations of fancy working upon popular
THE PEESPECTIVE NEWSKI.291
data, which has caused a mathematical eye to preside over the creation of Petersburg. One can never for a moment forget, in surveying tliis abode of monuments without genius, that it is a city built by a man, and not by a people. The conceptions appear limited, though their dimensions are enormous.
The principal street in Petersburg is the Perspective Ncwski, one of the three lines which meet at the palace of the Admiralty. These three lines divide into five regular parts the southern side of the city, which, like Versailles, takes the form of a fan. It is more modern than the port, built near to the islands by Peter the Great.
The Perspective Newski deserves to be described in detail. It is a beautiful street, a league in length, and as broad as our Boulevards. In several places trees have been planted, as unfortunate in their position as those of Paris. It serves as a promenade and rendezvous for all the idlers of the city. Of these, hoAvever, there are but few, for here people seldom move for the sake of moving; each step that is taken has an object independent of pleasure. To carry an order—to pay their court—to obey their master, whoever he may be — such are the influences which put in motion the greater part of the population of Petersburg and of the empire.
Large uneven flint-stones form the execrable pavement of this boulevard called the Perspective : but here, as in some other principal streets, there are deeply imbedded in the midst of the stones, blocks of fir-wood in the shape of cubes, and sometimes of octagons, over which the carriages glide swiftly. Each of these pavements
